Friends and Foe
by earwig
Summary: Four friends, four perspectives.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Friends and Foe  
**Author**: Empress Earwig  
**Rating**: G  
**Spoilers**: Set in a fairly current GH universe. Events don't correspond exactly.  
**Author's Notes**: This was not my idea. I blame lapiccolina entirely. Thanks to sugarpromises for the encouragement, and to normativejean for the technical assistance. This story was a bit of an experiment, to see if I could understand and write characters that I'm not particularly fond of. I think it turned out fairly well.

**Summary**: A circle of friends bound together through adversity; four souls who desperately need things their own families can't give them.

**Friends and Foe **

_And the little love I had  
For all my friends and foe  
And the little lines we've drawn between us all have  
Taken hold_

The Frames, Friends and Foe

**Lucky, The Sound of Silence**

_Hello darkness, my old friend,  
I've come to talk with you again,  
Because a vision softly creeping,  
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,  
And the vision that was planted in my brain  
Still remains  
Within the sound of silence._

Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence

The night Elizabeth leaves is the night that you finally understand just how big your family home truly is. Where before there had been the noise of an active toddler and newborn to fill up the rooms, nothing but empty silence now rings. For the first time you understand why your father couldn't stay in this house without your mother, why he had to leave. Staying in this house alone could drive a man to drink, and with your past that's a risk you just can't take.

* * *

Working double shifts becomes normal in the weeks following your family's removal from the house. Anything to escape the oppressive silence found within the walls of the house that's really much too big for a single man. You beg Lulu to reconsider moving in, hoping that the noise of a teenage girl will help alleviate the quiet, but again, your request is denied. For the hours you can't escape the house itself, you take to leaving the television on at all times, or the radio, or your computer, blaring sound into a void, that really does nothing to fill the hole in your heart.

You never realized that silence could be so loud.

* * *

One night Emily shows up on your doorstep holding a fistful of DVDs and a pineapple and Canadian bacon pizza. She forces her way into the house, proclaiming that a night with your best friend is just what you need, and that you'll thank her for this invasion later.

As she bustles around, making herself at home in the kitchen and on your sofa, you think she might be right. With the noise and life Emily brings, the house seems just a little bit smaller.

* * *

Movies and take out become a weekly ritual. When you watch comedies, you order Chinese. Action flicks (that you know Emily is only tolerating for your sake), Mexican. It's her favorite, and it seems the fairest trade off. Horror movies are viewed with pizza, and with a critical eye. Both of you are no strangers to blood and guts, after all, and critiquing the damage of a serial killer is par for the course.

The only movies you don't watch are romantic comedies. You never tell Emily she can't choose one, but she knows you're not ready anyway.

* * *

Emily's decided what you really need to fill up your life is routine, and that she's going to get you hooked on her favorite television show. She brings her copies of all three seasons of DVDs, proclaiming it the funniest show on television right now, and that it's something you'll love.

What she fails to mention is that underneath all the humor is an epic love story.

The two of you settle into a routine of binging on episodes, all to get you caught up. You sometimes wonder why she's spending so many nights on your couch, when she's supposedly so happy with Nikolas and Spencer at Wyndemere. Maybe her home is just as quiet as yours, even with the people that you thought were to blame for the silence.

You find yourselves arguing about whether Jim or Pam is more to blame for the suffering in silence routine they spend so much time doing. Emily believes that it's all been too obvious for Pam to really have been in denial for so long, and feels sorry for Jim, who has been wearing his heart on his sleeve for so long. But you see it from Pam's perspective. When you've been with someone that long, it's hard to let go of that stability. Hard to take a risk on what's been underneath your nose all along.

That night, when you've finished watching Jim and Pam's song and dance for the evening, and you exchange your normal good-bye hug, you brush your lips across Emily's cheek, just a fraction too close to her lips. When she jumps back in surprise, you act as though nothing has happened.

Taking risks isn't always as easy as it seems.

* * *

After what happened, you're not sure when she'll be back to continue watching. You wonder if it was smart to possibly alienate the one person who has really concerned themselves with how you're coping with the end of an on-again, off-again ten-year relationship, but then she appears at the normal time, saying that you are absolutely going to finish the second season tonight, no matter how long it takes.

You both settle into the couch, Emily wrapped in her normal blanket to ward off the fall chill. You find yourself sitting just a hair closer together than normal, and you wonder if she's as desperate for the warmth of another human being as you are. When her head falls onto your shoulder, and her hand reaches for yours, you think you have your answer.

And when Jim tells Pam "I just needed you to know. Once," you wonder if your entire friendship hasn't been building to this all along, and if either of you ever realized it. When they kiss, you squeeze Emily's hand, and wonder if you have the courage to take that kind of chance.

When the noise of the DVD shuts off and the screen turns to black, you realize while the room is silent, the house no longer seems so quiet.


	2. Emily, The World at Bay

**Emily, The World at Bay**

_Easy silence that you make for me  
It's okay when there's nothing more to say to me  
And the peaceful quiet you create for me  
And the way you keep the world at bay for me_

Dixie Chicks, Easy Silence

When one of your best friends falls in love with your brother, and your other best friend is left alone, it's hard to know how to react. It's hard to figure out how to support everyone without it seeming like you're choosing sides. So you tell your brother to go after the woman he loves, and encourage Elizabeth to leave Lucky, and hope that when the dust settles Lucky will forgive you and realize you were only trying to minimize his pain.

You won't blame him if he doesn't see it that way, though. You don't always see it that way yourself.

* * *

Life as an intern, surrogate mother, and girlfriend is busier and more complicated than you ever imagined it would be. You barely have enough time to eat, sleep, and tuck Spencer in at night most days, which doesn't leave you the time to check up on Lucky, though you remind yourself daily that you need to. He's been there to hold your hand through all your major life crises, and you know you need to be there for him.

But then Nikolas starts having mood swings, outbursts, and violent episodes, and suddenly your time is even tighter. You're terrified to leave him, and yet you're terrified to be in the home you share, and you're scared to leave the boy you've grown to love as your own son alone with his father. In the past, this is when you'd always call on Lucky, but this time you think it's up to you to be the strong one, to be the one to shoulder everyone's problems.

It's harder than you ever thought it would be.

* * *

When Alexis comes to stay at Wyndemere with her girls, you find yourself a little freer. She loves Nikolas and Spencer as much as you do, and with her in the house, you don't feel so obligated to spend all your free time waiting for something horrible to happen.

One night you find yourself completely without responsibility due to an unexpected scheduling error at the hospital. You can't bring yourself to head back to whatever potential disaster awaits you at home, so you swing by your favorite pizza place, picking up your childhood favorite of Canadian bacon and pineapple, and the video store for the movies you and Lucky would watch on lazy Sunday afternoons when you first moved to Port Charles. You think it's time you start making up for what you privately think of as betrayal to your oldest friend.

You only hope it's not too late.

* * *

As you stand on the steps of what you've always considered your second home waiting for Lucky to answer the door, you wonder what you'll say when he answers. Should you apologize for not being there lately? Should you pretend that you haven't spent time helping Elizabeth leave him, while not being there to hold his hand? You haven't yet decided when the door opens and the haggard, tired face of your best friend appears before you.

Immediately you know that whatever platitudes you were about to spout don't matter, and you start a string of inane chatter, taking Lucky along for the ride. You hand him the pizza and movies and head back to the kitchen you actually know better than your own for plates, napkins, and drinks, all the while filling Lucky in on the cheerier parts of your existence. You tell him about all the new words Spencer has learned, and how you got to observe a practically once-in-a-lifetime surgery with Patrick Drake. You know he isn't really listening, but when you step back into the living room, he's propped open the pizza box on the coffee table and has queued up one of the movies.

When you slip onto the couch next to him and hand him a soda, you see a shadow of a real smile on his face, and you know it's a start.

* * *

You and Lucky settle into a routine of weekly movie nights. It's time you really should be spending at home with Nikolas and Spencer, and you feel guilty for not being there, but you need the diversion. For exactly two hours, you can relax and smile and spend time with your best friend, pretending that both of your lives haven't gone horribly wrong somewhere. He never asks why Nikolas doesn't come with you, and you don't tell him.

You sometimes wonder what you'd say if he did.

* * *

When the fall television season starts, and you realize that Lucky hasn't been introduced to the wonder that is _The Office_, you immediately set out to rectify the oversight. You lend him your copies of the DVDs, insisting that your weekly movie night will now be devoted to catching up on old episodes.

You find yourselves laughing at Jim's pranks, covering your eyes in horror at Michael's latest antics, and arguing about who is more to blame for the predicament in which Jim and Pam find themselves. Since you've been the long suffering one with a crush that you're certain is obvious to the entire world, you argue for Jim, saying that it's impossible for anyone to be as oblivious as Pam seems. Fighting about a fictional relationship seems so silly considering you're facing a boyfriend that may or may not be losing his mind, and Lucky's facing the loss of his wife and children. But for the hours you spend watching, it's like nothing else matters. And really, isn't that the point?

When you leave one night, you hug him good night as usual, and you're suddenly surprised to feel his lips on your cheek. It's not as though you haven't kissed each other countless times in over ten years of friendship, but you don't remember it ever feeling quite like that before.

Riding the launch back to your prince, you run your fingers along your cheek where he kissed you, and wonder why you can still feel his lips burning your skin.

* * *

You arrive for your normal movie night, and you think you see a look of surprise cross Lucky's face when he answers the door. But it's gone in an instant, and you're immediately ushered inside, where you find the DVDs already in the player and the blanket you've taken to using already laid out across the back of the couch.

As you watch Jim and Pam communicate without speaking, while Dwight loses his mind over drugs and urine, you find yourself slipping your head onto his shoulder and your hand into his. You tell yourself that this is just normal friend behavior, and truly it is. You and Lucky have done this a million times before, even though it feels like, by twining your fingers with his, something has shifted. But it's a comfort you hadn't known you were seeking, and as you watch Jim finally confess his feelings for Pam as Lucky is beside you, solid as a rock, you wonder if maybe Lucky wasn't right: maybe it's easy to be a Pam and not even realize it.

As the episode ends, and the DVD player shuts its self off, you hold onto Lucky's hand in the dark, and wonder if you haven't betrayed someone else entirely.


	3. Nikolas, Fairytale Gone Bad

**Nikolas, Fairytale Gone Bad**

_Out of my life, Out of my mind  
Out of the tears we can't deny  
We need to swallow all our pride  
And leave this mess behind  
Out of my head, Out of my bed  
Out of the dreams we had, they're bad  
Tell them it's me who made you sad  
Tell them the fairytale gone bad_

Sunrise Avenue, Fairytale Gone Bad

You don't really believe in fairy tales.

But when you're a prince (empty title though it may be), it's the first thing people think of when they meet you. You understand, but think that if they'd spent more time reading the Brothers Grimm instead of watching Disney classics, they'd understand that there's no such thing as happily ever after with singing animals.

The singing animals have always secretly frightened you anyway.

* * *

Truthfully, fairy tales didn't really enter your life till you moved to Port Charles. Your uncle and grandmother didn't believe in bedtime stories, at least not fictional ones. When you have a family history of attempts at world domination, stolen brides, and blood feuds, reality is more fantastic than most writers could ever imagine.

One in your endless string of nannies used to read you Russian folk takes, thinking them suitable fare for a small boy. When your grandmother found out, your nanny was let go, and her replacement was left with strict instructions about what was appropriate for a prince.

Years later, you buy a book of the same folk tales, and you read them to your son at night. There may not be any fairies in them, but you won't deny your son the same type of story telling that all small American children enjoy.

You want him to be the little boy you weren't.

* * *

Moving to Port Charles, you're surrounded by these supposed fairy tales come to life. Your mother and her husband are supposedly the epitome of devoted, forever love, and when your brother throws his perfect family in your face, you have to fight back the impulse to throw how it all started back in his. One day you finally can't hold it back any longer, and you think you can literally see his belief in fairy tales shatter before your eyes.

It's satisfying in a way, taking what you never had away from the brother who had what you lacked.

* * *

Emily was another of the fairy tale people you met in Port Charles, but where Lucky inspires destruction, Emily always inspired you to protect that fragile belief in the happily ever after. She was proof that an orphan who has lost everything can really be adopted into a loving, rich family and suddenly have it all.

When she looks at you, you can tell she thinks that you can make all her dreams come true and complete the fairy tale. But you know that a Cassadine prince has no business masquerading as prince charming.

Years later, when you help her through her battle with breast cancer and fall in love for real, you start to let her belief in fairy tales rub off on you. And through bouts of amnesia, doppelgangers, insane grandmothers, rape, and falling in love with other people, you always believe that the fairy tale that connects you will bring you back together. Your reunion is on much more human terms, each of you seeing the other as a human being, rather than living wish fulfillment, but the remnants of the dream linger.

Maybe you can't be prince charming, but a part of you wants to be.

* * *

As you start having violent episodes, your first instinct is to hide them from Emily. Your image of her as a fairy tale princess is too ingrained to completely escape, and what you forget is that every princess has a backbone of steel underneath their delicate exterior. Emily is no different, but remembering that has never been your strong suit. The urge to protect is deep-seeded, and fighting back your inner nature has always been difficult.

When she finally does find out, she becomes your biggest advocate. The two of you have been through so much, and neither of you are willing to let it go without a fight this time. Or at least, that's the way it starts.

As the weeks go by, and the random outbursts continue, you feel Emily begin to slip away. You're not sure what to make of it at first, because her work at the hospital has always given her an erratic schedule. But when you start to make discreet inquiries, you find that the extra shifts she's been claiming haven't really existed, and the plans she's claimed to have with Elizabeth were all just a cover.

You want to demand an explanation, but you aren't sure you have the right. You have your own secrets, after all.

* * *

One night, when Emily has again failed to come home, you decide to seek her out. You may be losing your mind, but you don't want that to mean losing her as well.

On a whim, you decide to go to Lucky's to see if he has any idea where Emily might be. He's always had instincts about Emily you haven't been able to match, and a part of you has always been jealous of their shared history. Emily may be yours now, but she'll always be someone else who was Lucky's first. A tiny sliver of the jealousy your grandmother so carefully nurtured remains, and you suspect it will never fully go away.

Walking up the steps to the house, you spy the glow of the television screen through the windows and hear the noise not only of the television screen, but of the voices of your brother and lover. Unable to stop yourself, you peek in through the windows, keeping yourself carefully out of sight.

The scene in front of you is perfectly innocuous, but at the same time, it leaves you feeling as though you've been betrayed. Emily and Lucky sitting on the couch, arguing loudly about whatever drivel they're watching, throwing popcorn to punctuate their points. There's nothing at all untoward about what's in front of you, but they're happy. Something you and Emily haven't really been in months, and something you don't think your brother deserves while supposedly grieving the dissolution of his marriage to Elizabeth for the second time.

As you leave, you wonder if Emily even considered you, while you were busy considering her.

* * *

When Emily slips into bed beside you that night, she moves to cuddle against you, in your normal fashion. But you feign sleep and roll away, leaving her with the sight of your bare back. It's petty, but it seems the fairest thing to do since you irrationally feel that she's turned her back on you.

As you try to fall asleep in the dark, you think you were better off when happily ever after was just the end to stories you knew better than to believe in.


	4. Elizabeth, On the Outside

**Elizabeth, On the Outside**

_I stood close enough to hear you say  
"Do as the beautiful ones do"  
Tore out my picture from its frame  
I just wanted to be one of you_

_Standin' on the outside, lookin'  
Funny how you see the truth  
But the feeling does come back to you_

Sheryl Crow, On the Outside

Port Charles is the first place you ever really feel like you have a family. It's not a family of blood, though your grandmother is wonderful, but it's a family by choice. A circle of friends bound together through adversity; four souls who desperately need things their own families can't give them. It might not be conventional, but it's yours.

You never thought you'd give that all up.

* * *

Leaving Lucky for good is the hardest thing you've ever done. You know that you never should have remarried him, never should have let him think Jake was his son, never should have fallen in love with another man while still professing to love him, but when you look at him, you still see yourself at 15, thinking he was the most beautiful boy in the world. Giving that boy up, rejecting the man he's become for another man breaks your heart, even though it's for the best.

If you leave, the both of you might someday be able to look back at those 15 year olds and remember them fondly, instead of seeing them through the eyes of the bitter, broken adults you've become.

You might not be in love with him anymore, but you still love him for being your first everything. You only hope he feels the same way.

* * *

You settle into your new house, your new life, your new family with Cameron and Jake and no Lucky, and try to regain your balance. You love Jason, you want to be with him, but you can't be. Though it wouldn't have been fair to Lucky to stay, to lead him on, you find yourself thinking that it's unfair that you'll never really have what you want. Lucky will eventually fall out of love and be able to move on, but you're stuck where you are, unable to do the same.

You sometimes wonder if you don't hate and love Jason in equal degrees.

* * *

As time moves on, you find yourself isolated from your family. You and Emily see each other at work, and from time to time when she brings Spencer by for play dates with his cousins, but the promises you both made for girls' nights in have gone unfulfilled. Rather than the sisterly closeness you've gained over the years, there is a careful distance between you. Nikolas isn't speaking to you, and though Emily assures you that it's something he's doing with everyone, you feel that he's tacitly taken his brother's side.

Somehow you forgot that they were Lucky's family first. That you were the interloper in their lives, and that in the same way they once opened their ranks to let you in, they are equally capable of closing them now to shut you out.

You never thought that losing Lucky would mean losing your family too.

* * *

One evening you go to pick Cameron and Jake up from your – Lucky's house. You almost use your key to open the door, but stop yourself and knock instead. You may be trying to be comfortable with each other for the boys sakes, but neither of you are ready for the casualness of letting yourself into a home that's not yours.

When the door opens to Emily's smiling face, you're stunned into silence. You know, you've always known, that she and Lucky were best friends. But to see her in what you still think of as your place, with your boys and your soon-to-be ex-husband, is a blow you weren't prepared for. You know you have no right to be upset. You checked out of the marriage almost before the ink was dry on the marriage certificate, but still. This is your family, in a place you still think of as your home, and to see another woman in your place is devastating, even if that woman is your best friend.

If Lucky or Emily is surprised by how quickly you bustle the boys out of the house, they do their best to not show it.

You just need to get away from the sudden, horrible thought that you've been replaced.

* * *

That evening, when Cameron and Jake are tucked safely into bed, worn out from their afternoon with their father and Aunt Emily, you sit on a couch that doesn't feel quite right yet, drink a glass of wine and flip through a photo album. It's one that you and Emily worked on together, one that features the friendship that you, Lucky, Emily, and Nikolas shared. As you flip through the pages, you notice how often you're not in the photos. How often that it's Emily in the center of the men. How happy Lucky and Emily looked to be in each other's company. How, even when you're included in the pictures, you're always on the fringes of them.

Looking back, you start to wonder if the family you though you had was all in your head; if you weren't as out of place with them as you had been your family of blood; if Emily was the one that had always mattered most, and you'd never realized.

You look back, and wonder if you'd ever really fit


End file.
